artist profile

John Baldessari

born

1931

lives and works

Santa Monica, USA

education

BFA, San Diego State College, San Diego, USA, 1953
MFA, San Diego State College, San Diego, USA, 1957
Honorary DFA, Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design, Los Angeles, USA, 1990
Honorary DFA, San Diego State University and the California State University, San Diego, USA, 2003
Honorary DFA, Burren College of Art, National University of Ireland, Ballyvaughan, Ireland, 2006

about the artist

A leading American conceptualist, John Baldessari has manufactured a creative legacy that laid the groundwork for a completely new genre of contemporary artistic practice. He investigates the myriad possibilities and complexities of human imagination, mental association, and latent synapses through appropriation, juxtaposition, and, perhaps most notably, seemingly arbitrary obstruction of images and texts. Over time, the artist has grown comfortable with working in photomontage using found media and printed materials, an approach that effectively generates relative meaning for all kinds of audiences. Dedicated to education, Baldessari has, for decades, been simultaneously artist and professor of art. Trustee, jury member, curator, and fellow at numerous institutions, foundations, and museums, he was also recipient of countless prestigious awards and grants, such as the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Fellowship in 2004, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 53rd edition of the Venice Biennale in 2009, and many more. Monographs, catalogues, and solo and group exhibitions of the artist’s work number in the hundreds. A monumental retrospective, John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, traveled the world from 2009 to 2011, its installments having been held at the Tate Modern in London, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.